Corporation Man

An interesting program on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) reported recent findings by anthropologists about the relationships between Neanderthals and modern humans, Homo Sapiens. It had always been thought that sapiens and Neanderthals were so different that they existed together only for a short time in competition before sapiens wiped out Neanderthals entirely.  It turns out Neanderthals were a lot more like us than we had imagined, with speech genes like ours and the beginnings of art. And though we had thought interbreeding impossible, it turns out that Neanderthals and sapiens occupied the same territories for thousands of years, and that Neanderthal genes are included in all our inheritances.  In fact, some of the genes which give us disease resistance were originally from Neanderthals.  Neanderthals didn’t just get vanquished; they are part of us, still protecting us.

Last week I was “waxing wroth”, as the old books used to describe having a tantrum, about losing our focus on major issues like climate change because of media focus on more entertaining things like whether three days of confusion over press release language about Benghazi constituted a cover up. A second mega-tornado in or near their home territory in less than ten years seems to have at least caused some southwestern congressmen to shuffle their feet uneasily on the climate subject, but other major issues remain in obscurity.  An issue that might as well be in the witness protection program for all the attention it gets is the continuing struggle between multinational corporations and national governments. That issue was first brought to my attention by David Rothkopf’s book, Power, Inc., which I’ve mentioned before.  In it Rothkopf likens the struggle to the struggle between Neanderthals and sapiens, with the nation state as the Neanderthal on the way out. But the nation state has been fighting blindfolded.  It’s not just a blindness peculiar to conservatives; liberals seem equally indifferent.  Joan Walsh, a liberal whose book I criticized in my last post, recounts ad nauseum the sins of American Republicans but seems oblivious to the ways both Republicans and Democrats are being eaten alive by multinational corporations claiming to be American “persons” just like the people next door.    But it seems to be acquiring some visibility internationally.

Apple has been heavily criticized both here and abroad this past week for its use of the tax shelters created by shifting profits around between shell subsidiaries.  A Senate report alleges that Apple has avoided $76 billion in U.S. taxes by shifting them to no-tax Irish corporations that have no employees and exist only on paper.  Britain’s Prime Minister has added Amazon and Starbucks to the list, and the EU Council president, citing Google among others, has raised it to a top issue as a major factor in their economic crisis.  Corporations like GE and others that pay no tax on billions of dollars of revenue are becoming commonplace.  It’s on its way to being a major agenda item for the G-8 and possibly the G-20 meetings as they roll around.  That sort of attention will be required because, as I’ve noted, multinationals’ major weapon in the struggle is that they, unlike your local business, are not confinable within national boundaries.  They are “your” corporation when they seek subsidies, protection or business from you. They vanish elsewhere when you ask for taxes or the obligations of national loyalty.  They do not pledge allegiance.

Currently, nation states are being starved in a systematic way by the multinationals.  The taxes avoided by multinationals in just the U.S. add up to more than the national deficit, creating both the deficit issues conservatives abhor and the inability hated by liberals to fund infrastructure development, new technology and social programs. I do not mean that multinationals act in any concerted way seeking to starve nations.  That would be stupid – they and their employees live and feed on the multiplicity of goods and services provided by the nation.  They just, like parasites, mindlessly keep on feeding until their host is dead without any action to keep it alive, then expect to move on to another.  But of course, their host and its people are also their customers, and additional nation states are in short supply.

A real Modus Vivendi needs to be established between multinational corporations and their host nation states.  A first goal needs to be an international structure of tax treaties that will ensure continued fiscal health of the nation states.  As one OECD official recently stated off the record, "international tax treaties are intended to avoid double taxation, not to allow double non-taxation.” But the other major issue is that corporations, unlike real “persons”, currently have fiduciary responsibilities but no social responsibilities.  Both through internationally enforceable regulation or through broadening of corporate responsibilities to include obligations both to host nations and to their employees everywhere, multinationals must contribute to the sustainability of the world they inhabit.  Social responsibilities are not just externalities.  For example, an international requirement for adequate health care coverage or retirement coverage would be a major step forward.

I mentioned that we get some of our disease resistance from Neanderthal genes.  A responsibility to “promote the general welfare” is part of the genetic makeup of the Neanderthal nation state that David Rothkopf thinks is on the way out.  It is part of our social “immune system”, defending us from social ills brought on by our obsessive pursuit of personal gain.  Those social ills ultimately, when left unchecked, have always resulted in our killing each other through wars and revolutions and unable to work together on our common problems. The creation of a new age of international corporatism must not result in removal of the system that helps keep us as a species alive.